Forgiveness is a Process
by ManOfChocolate
Summary: Asriel stands before a door. Just an average, hardwood apartment door. Behind the door awaits a potentially very bad time for the young Dreemurr. A bad time he cannot stave off forever. Asriel reaches for the doorknob.
**A/N: Crosspost from AO3. This was another request done as requested by a kindly requester Anon. The prompt was "Asriel attempts to apologize to Sans for his whole time-traveling mass murder spree". I feel like Sans often gets dragged two very extreme ends of his personality, so I attempted to stay as close to his in-game behavior as possible. You'll be the judge!**

 **Please insert 1 [Bar of Chocolate], for further fics.**

* * *

Every single speck of dust in Asriel's body screamed loudly at him about the imminent destruction he was about to face.

The young monster gulped, primal fear making his body tremble like a leaf. He had been standing before the completely average apartment door for several minutes now, but made absolutely no attempts to open it. It seemed like an ordinary door, but to his eyes, it was a door on fire, oozing snakes, spikes and most likely several series of other deadly apparatus. He took another deep breath and shook his head once again; a motion he had repeated several times over by now.

"Now or never!" he stomped and raised a hand to knock.

At the moment, the door swung wide open, revealing the grinning skeleton behind it.

"i honestly thought you were going to just stay here all day long." he said. While it was difficult to tell with someone who had a near-permanent smile plastered on their face, but Sans did seem rather amused.

"Oh, I... howdy!" Asriel stammered. Not two seconds into this meeting and already he was fumbling badly. "...you saw me?"

"seen you for about half an hour now from the window." Sans pointed at the large, impossible-to-miss window next to the door. "i thought you had taken root on the doormat."

The goat monster frowned, unsure if he was supposed to be offended, insulted or both. Nonetheless, as Sans cleared from the door, he walked inside, choosing to swallow that crude little remark. It did make their standing very clear though.

Asriel entered the apartment, finding it not much different than their home in Snowdin had been. The interior layout actually seemed like a straight-up copy, complete with the set of ominous lights blinking out from under the door to Sans' room. The skeleton closed the door behind him, and that did give Asriel a bit of a shiver as he was almost sure Sans had locked it as well. Sure, it came with living among humans, but that little bit of doubt was not necessarily misplaced.

"so, what brings you here?"

"You know how it is, I happened to be in the neighborhood." Asriel lied so convincingly he wanted to eat his own shirt for even attempting it. "Er... Mom and I found this for you." he quickly trailed off, handing Sans a bottle of ketchup. "She said she'd never seen this brand before and you might like it?"

"aw, how thoughtful of you." Sans tilted his head just a tiny bit and accepted the gift. Whether it really was an unfamiliar brand or not, Asriel couldn't really tell, but it was the only ice-breaker he could think of.

Sans surveyed the bottle before looking up to face him again. "so uh... we're really doing this now, are we?"

Obviously, it did not work.

"I'm... not sure I follow?"

Sans sighed, his grin unwavering. "sorry, i'm bad at this. i always skip the warm-ups." he glanced to the side for a moment, before returning his full attention to Asriel. "actually i just skip the whole exercise. closer to the reward that way?"

He pulled a hand out of his pocket in a motion that sent Asriel's heart spinning around in a dreadful circle.

"Wait!" he cried, even though it was difficult to tell whether the skeleton was about to do anything. "Okay, you got me. I'm here to talk."

"aw, if it's just my number you want-"

"Not like that." the youngest Dreemurr groaned. It was becoming increasingly hard to tell what Sans was trying to bring out from him. "I want to talk about everything that happened. About... the whole Flowey-thing."

"oh that." the skeleton shrugged, definitely amused to at least some visible degree. "i thought you might want to. shoot."

Asriel cleared his throat, finding it difficult to fight down the impulse to just bolt straight for the door. He's had many discussions with Frisk about everything, but the human would never show anything but outpouring support and understanding. Sans was a significantly different beast, especially concerning his unique qualities. He sighed and began the second most difficult explanation of his life:

"I'm really, really sorr-"

"no prob. wanna go to Grillby's?"

The monster prince blinked a few times in silence.

"...wha-?"

"i can tell that's not the reply you expected." Sans shrugged, extending his arms. "sorry prince, i'm running low on material for today."

"Sans, please!" Asriel's fear was dancing hand-in-hand with frustration over the lack of clarity. "Can't you be serious for a moment?"

As soon as he uttered that word, Asriel felt a chill running through his back. The entire room felt like someone had flash-frozen the walls, with them still inside. Sans chuckled, but it didn't seem like a most pleasant one.

"alright." he said, raising his head. For just a brief second, Asriel could swear he saw the tell-tale blue glow of incoming pain.

"so uh... what you did was pretty uncool." Sans continued, flinging a tiny speck of dirt off his bony finger. "hurting and killing everyone over and over again. that's some pretty gross stuff."

"Y-yeah..." Asriel muttered, rubbing his arm through the sweater. This was the topic he so wanted to discuss and yet it was no less easier now than it had been with Frisk. "I did a lot of bad things..."

"i wouldn't know, i slept through most of it." the skeleton shrugged once again, though his overall demeanor did change slightly. There seemed to be an additional bit of weight to his words, more so than before. "i don't remember much, either. but oh, if the walls of judgment hall could talk-"

Asriel's swallowed deeply as Sans' eyes seemed to vanish for a brief instant. "They might just call yo R."

Until now, Asriel never quite understood what Sans had meant the many times they've met in the past. As Flowey, he was unable to feel love, but with that came the loss of empathy as well. The skeleton seemed like an open book to Frisk, who simply had the courtesy to leave some pages untouched. To him, he was still an open book, but one which the prince simply slapped open on a random page, unaware of the contents. He felt an unmistakable and highly bothersome crawling feeling all over his back.

Asriel took a deep breath, never taking his eyes off Sans. His eyes had long returned to their normal state, but there was a certain dread lingering about him even now.

"Yes... yes I was... am-USED to be a murderer. I did awful things to everyone, including you and Papyrus." Asriel could almost see his own breath as the temperature felt like it had dropped another few degrees. "But I didn't come here looking for a fight."

"fight?" Sans asked. He started chuckling softly. "who said anything about fighting?"

"You seemed pretty mad..."

"kid, look at me." Sans pulled his coat apart, showing off his unmistakably skeletal chest. "i got nowhere to put any anger. i'm just so hollow these days."

For one brief moment, even Asriel couldn't resist a snort. The room felt the same as before, warm and inviting.

"besides toriel would have my head if i hurt you and i'm not ready to be a theater prop yet." he added, diffusing the situation more and more.

He walked over to the sofa they must have carried all the way from Snowdin and hopped down.

"Why... why aren't you furious with me?" Asriel asked after a minute of silence. He wasn't sure why he was still pushing this, but he had to.

"it doesn't help." Sans looked up. The grin was there, the eyes were there, but there was a brief pang in Asriel's heart that reminded him just how many times the skeleton must have witnessed the worst he could offer.

"i could judge you, here and now." he said. "blast you, fling you around till your bones rattle harder than mine. i could do all that and so much more. and it still wouldn't change anything."

The prince rubbed his arms again and approached the sofa. He picked up the ketchup bottle they got for Sans and passed it over to him. He nodded in approval and took a brief swig of it.

"frisk changed it. they took control and found an exit they could accept." he continued. "and now we have this. i don't judge anymore, we're past that point. all i can tell you is that you got some big shoes to fill, if you really want to make something out of this now."

"... but you're still mad."

"and i will be." Sans nodded. His grin was the same as always and yet it was perhaps most comforting as they were now. There was an honesty to them Asriel would never see from anyone else. "but instead of fighting like children, i think we should settle this like adults."

Asriel raised a brow and sat down next to him. The skeleton immediately offered him his brother's controller, perfectly in synch with the TV turning on. It didn't take much effort for the goat prince to know what he meant. Grinning for the first time since he stopped by the apartment, he took the controller with determination burning in his heart. Sans returned the grin with the familiar, but surprisingly softer blue glow in his eye.

As the game started up, the unmistakable feeling of accomplishment swelled in his chest. It wasn't the bloody showdown, or the tearful atonement he had previously envisioned, but within all those possibilities, he definitely felt like-

 **SMILEY T. BAG LOGGED IN**

Asriel felt his sins crawling on his back.


End file.
